RACISM 101
Conniff, Ruth
Racism 101 BY RUTH CONNIFF At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the brothers of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity are known as Fijis, and each spring they throw what they call a Fiji Island Party....
...And then it died out...
...In New Mexico, students also complain about ethnocentrism in the classroom...
...You have to write an essay on a subject that you don't understand because of cultural differences...
...Real change requires a reevaluation of the basic philosophy of college education— who is qualified to be educated and what constitutes an education...
...And secondly, if it's someone from an Asian culture, most people don't debate in Asian culture...
...The university has instituted workshops and classes on race relations, a pledge to recruit more minority staff and students, and stricter penalties for racial harassment...
...Mandatory ethnic-studies programs, which would teach students about a variety of cultures, are a big item among the reforms student activists are demanding and university administrators are discussing on various campuses, including Stanford, Berkeley, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Massachusetts...
...If it was okay then, why not now...
...First of all, if you're a recent immigrant, you might not know the Constitution as well...
...They said, 'Okay, we have this racial ignorance, you go in and educate them.' It was like when you're four years old and your parents sit you down and try to make you learn your multiplication tables...
...These factors, plus rising tuition rates, push the state university beyond the reach of many...
...And you know, it may be written so it sounds kind of nice, but you're sitting there saying, 'God, this is offensive.' That's what your professors want you to read...
...Mainly, we're not talking about white students," says Barbara Ransby of the Michigan coalition, "but rather a racist administration...
...The fraternity has been suspended by the Interfraternity Council...
...You're behind to start off with and you're going to stay behind...
...Students moved on, and administrators and institutions got weary of dealing in a half-assed way with racism...
...Changes like those made by Stanford in its required study of Western civilization—which is now called "Culture and Ideas" and includes works by minorities and women—are still the subject of much debate...
...Many academics fear that in embracing such a diverse program of studies, universities may fail to educate students in the foundations of American society...
...Members of UCAR are working to form a national student movement against racism...
...And you don't study people like Rejes Tijerina, or the disputes over the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo land grants...
...You have to look at the mindset of minority students when they get here," says Charles Holly of the University of Wisconsin's Black Student Union...
...But what feels like racism from the point of view of a minority doesn't seem like racism to white students...
...Students charge that some admissions policies are deliberately designed to keep them Ruth Conniff, an undergraduate at Yale University, was an editorial intern at The Progressive last summer...
...When white students say there is no reason for them to challenge their racist assumptions, they merely reflect a world view fostered by the university...
...The thing is," says Maximiliano Madrid, a senior at UNM who was admitted as a General College student, "now you're told you're going to have to take two years at the community college and then comes the university and it takes four or five more years...
...The alternatives are less comfortable for New Mexico's low-income Hispanic, native American, and black students...
...And campus racism is no new phenomenon...
...U.C...
...The Fiji party, for example, had been going on every spring for years before anyone called attention to it...
...Cultural centers and special programs set up to accommodate nonwhite students have dwindled or disappeared...
...Many white students, however, resent the recent surge of attention to issues of race...
...Name-calling and even violent threats are routine...
...When you write a paper, it's more of a discussion...
...One major bone of contention is the English-language program...
...We [black students] were wrong for even raising the issue, because it had been going on for years...
...It starts when they apply for admission and financial aid, continues in the classroom, and extends to daily life on campus...
...Enrollment by Asians has not declined, but in the last few years it has leveled off...
...We feel very comfortable that there is an alternative for students to come back to us better prepared...
...That's why a lot of Asians flunk out of Berkeley," says Nam Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American student, "not because they can't do the work...
...But for minorities, the news is old...
...You're from the area and you're proud of your people and you're sitting here reading something by Willa Cather about fat, greasy Mexicans who, all they want to do is have kids...
...Blacks and Hispanics are increasingly underrepresented on campus—26,000 fewer blacks attend college now than in 1980—because cuts in financial aid and the shift from grants to loans under the Reagan Administration make tuition unaf-fordable for most minorities...
...The state legislature imposed the plan to raise standards at the university by phasing out a special-admissions program for students who don't meet the regular grade and test-score requirements...
...One guy stood up and said, T don't know why we're here.' That set the tone...
...The university's idea was just to parade black students in there," Holly says...
...Asian students, like Hispanics and blacks, also say they feel alienated and receive inadequate support while at the university...
...At about the same time, black students at the University of Michigan found fliers slipped under their doors declaring "open hunting season on jigaboos and porch monkeys...
...Its president told one of the protesters the event "wasn't intended to be racist...
...More black students graduate from high school now than ten years ago, but more and more blacks and Hispanics join the military or enroll in vocational schools instead of going to college...
...We've been stabbed from all sides," says Dan Mose, a Wisconsin Fiji...
...Chancellor Ira Michael Heyman denies that the university's admissions policies are discriminatory, but he recently made a public apology for not responding "more openly and less defensively" to Asian students' concerns...
...That's racist...
...Fewer nonwhites are enrolling in college these days, and fewer can stay...
...With the tightening of educational funds and the conservative political climate, many white students resent such measures as affirmative action, which seem to coddle minorities...
...Given this set of circumstances, it is not surprising that white students are confused by and resentful of the sudden surge of attention to issues of race...
...After recent racist incidents, black student activists have rallied to demand that university administrators protect their safety and address the declines in enrollment, financial aid, and supportive resources...
...Before they can hope to combat campus racism, students, professors, and administrators must change the deeply ingrained attitude that Western culture is the most important culture, that nonwhite cultures are separate from "real" American culture...
...Student activists claim the ESL program is culturally discriminatory...
...Although student activists have made some gains recently in the struggle against campus racism, it will take a deep revision of universities' structures and values to make a lasting change...
...There are certain pieces of literature that are very offensive," says Madrid...
...At the University of Massachusetts, white students attacked an interracial couple and several black students on campus...
...But their idea was that what they do shouldn't offend anyone...
...You study long enough and all of a sudden you say, 'Hey, maybe that's not right,' even the way the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors depict things in Southwest Studies...
...It's one thing to say, 'Damn, I'm sorry, Charles, I didn't know that would offend you,' and another to say, 'I don't care if it does.' That's the attitude the fraternity has: 'I don't know and I don't care.'" The same attitude is evident in the argument that Stanford's Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Carl Degler makes against multicultural education: "It is difficult, to say the least, to name the important institutions and values in modern American culture that can be shown to have been derived from Africa, China, Ja-pan...
...Charles Holly, who attended the fraternity's training session, has a different view...
...For the festivities of May 1987, they painted themselves in blackface and set up, on the lawn outside their fraternity house, a large caricatured cutout of a black man with a bone through his nose...
...Long after the civil-rights movement and desegregation, black students worry about their safety at universities all over the country...
...In Madison, University of Wisconsin chancellor Donna Shalala, with the help of student and faculty committees, has formulated a plan to combat racism that includes awareness training for students, a cross-departmental ethnic studies requirement, and a pledge to increase recruitment of minority students and faculty...
...There was this alumnus standing there in the background clapping and saying, 'Yeah!' The whole thing was based on the idea that the fraternity guys were ignorant...
...They don't want you to read something by Raulfo Acuna, talking about occupied America...
...If you go by that model, then, yes, the members of the Fiji fraternity were racist in that they were ignorant and insensitive...
...After the Fiji party, the university temporarily suspended the fraternity...
...Efforts to combat racism among students can be useful, she says, "but it's really not the crux of the problem...
...In Albuquerque's public high schools, the Industrial Cooperative Training Program encourages low-income students to learn job skills and start working before they graduate...
...It was reinstated last spring with the understanding that members would attend one of the new racism-awareness sessions...
...At the University of California at Berkeley, Asian-American students are engaged in a different kind of struggle with the administration...
...The model for these training sessions describes racism as a series of stages varying between ignorance and intentional discrimination," says Roger Howard, associate dean of students...
...Meanwhile, back in Madison at the University of Wisconsin, in late October, the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity dressed its pledges up in Afro wigs and blackface and held a slave auction...
...Extra years in school mean a bigger accumulation of loans to pay off and more time before beginning careers...
...They always pick on the Greek system...
...White culture dominates the curriculum, and that reinforces white students' assumption that theirs is the only legitimate culture...
...The white community was sensitized and the minority community's interest was heightened...
...There are no Asian counselors and they are not considered a priority for tutoring...
...University administrators have responded to the outcry by announcing plans to combat the problem...
...For instance, they ask you to debate a point in the Constitution...
...And teachers don't understand why the students are writing this way...
...Berkeley awards extra points, for example, to students who pass achievement tests in European foreign languages, but no points are awarded to students who know Chinese or Vietnamese...
...We don't think we need to be here...
...While this is a legitimate concern, it must be considered alongside the all-too-visible failings of a university atmosphere traditionally hostile to minorities...
...You've got to teach yourself that stuff...
...The current emphasis on "raising standards" at universities, rather than on opening doors to students from ethnically and economically diverse backgrounds, has aggravated this trend...
...If whites are nicer and more polite to black students, it doesn't change the underlying oppressive power structure...
...In Albuquerque last year, the University of New Mexico began referring students who once qualified for the school's General College, or remedial program, to local community colleges...
...These incidents and others like them have been widely reported as evidence of a resurgence of racism on campus...
...It seems like the way the university and the black students went after them was just for attention," says a member of a sorority on campus...
...Institutional callousness to nonwhites fosters an atmosphere among students that is hostile to minorities in several ways: ¶ White students don't see or know much about other cultures and ethnic groups because groups are underrepre-sented on campus...
...Berkeley considers that there are too many Asians on campus in the first place, and not enough are flunking out to need help," says Richard Ehara, a tutor at Berkeley and a member of a committee protesting the university's Asian policies...
...Most continue in their jobs afterwards or go on to the Technical Vocational Institute...
...Many Asian immigrants who pass their other classes do not graduate because of the English requirement...
...The United Coalition Against Racism at Michigan played host in the summer of 1987 to students from twenty other campuses to discuss building a new movement...
...Hispanics, Asians, and native Americans, as well as blacks, struggle against racism deeply rooted in the universities...
...Going to the nearby Technical Vocational Institute is more reasonable for students than paying university tuition for basic courses, says Gary Kerkendal, assistant head of admissions at the university...
...We just had a party, and they're making us into villains.' "It was the whole blame-the-victim thing...
...out...
...But tensions between black and white students are just the most visible part of the problem...
...Eight students who protested were arrested...
...Gerald Thomas, who now conducts race-awareness training sessions at the University of Wisconsin, has watched the atmosphere on campus change since he started teaching Afro-American studies in 1970...
...As with all the university's remedial programs, a student who fails more than one ESL course flunks out, regardless of grade-point average...
...More than half 'You're going to class on the first day, and you're the only black in with 300 whites, all staring at you like, What are you doing here?' of the Asian students at Berkeley are recent immigrants, and they represent 80 per cent of those enrolled in the three-semester English as a Second Language sequence...
...At several such conferences held that summer, students discussed strategies for dealing with a racism that is more subtle and insidious than that confronted by their predecessors a generation ago...
...It's gotten to the point now where you hear so much about it [racism] that people are watching everything they say...
...We had the sensitivity and the awareness of racial issues culminating toward the end of the 1960s," he says...
...You're going to class on the first day, and you're the only black in with 300 white students, all staring at you like, 'What are you doing here?' My first football game here, freshman year, I had garbage thrown at me and was called 'nigger.' That was my last football game, too...
...Many of the gains achieved by the civil-rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s are slipping away...
...You use a lot of philosophy and lot of quotes and stuff...
Vol. 52 • December 1988 • No. 12
